The invention relates to glass manufacturing processes and apparatus and more particularly to processes and apparatus for feeding glass forming material to a glass tank or furnace in which it is required to maintain a controlled level of molten glass.
In a known process for the manufacture of glass, batch material and cullet, which consists of broken or refuse glass, are fed to a glass melting tank from which molten glass is withdrawn as the glass is formed. It is normally required to maintain the molten glass level in the tank at a controlled level and consequently the incoming material must be supplied at a controlled rate. It is known to use a level detector within the tank for sensing the level of molten glass and to use the output of the level detector for automatically controlling the rate of feed of batch material to the tank. The amount of cullet supplementing the batch material is normally controlled manually.